Though Alumbrera was a breathtaking property even before I began working on it, the lighting left quite a lot to be desired. The house is very heavy structurally and Mrs. Lundin could often be found carrying a flashlight around because the interior was so dimly lit. As I’ve discussed before: lighting is one of my very favorite elements of interior design so I couldn’t be more thrilled to dig in and let Alumbrera be seen in its best light.
There are a number of elements that make Alumbrera a challenge with regards to lighting. As with many of the villas on Mustique, the outlets and voltages in Alumbrera were all over the place: no uniformity whatsoever. I’m also very much against the idea of having any furniture against the walls, I prefer a floatier room plan where people can walk around all of the furniture; it feels less claustrophobic that way. But this presents a challenge in that you must figure out something to do with the chords to any lamps you’ve put in the room.
I called in a couple of experts to help me with this one. First was Anthony Bartolomeo, one of the founders of Integrate Electrical Solutions, a company out of New York that does amazing work with lighting. He transformed the rat’s nest of wires that used to power Alumbrera into an elegant lighting solution. Now, like magic, the mere push of a button will illuminate an entire room.
For help with lamps, I brought in the incomparable lamp doctor to the stars Gabriel Delasquez. We found some beautiful lamps for Alumbrera and used twisted silk chord that blended in perfectly and look very chic. Because so many of the rooms are indoor/ outdoor, there is always the issue of lamps blowing over in the high winds so we had to weigh them down. I’ll never forget the image of the elegant Gabriel trotting down to the world-famous Macaroni beach to fill the insides of our lamps with sand to keep them from blowing away.
After much work, the lighting at Alumbrera is divine and you won’t find anyone wandering around with a flashlight!
Though Alumbrera was breathtaking property even before I began working on it, the lighting left quite a lot to be desired. The house is very heavy structurally and Mrs. Lundin could often be found carrying a flashlight around. As I’ve discussed before: lighting is one of my very favorite elements of interior design so I couldn’t be more thrilled to dig in and let Alumbrera be seen in its best light.
There are a number of elements that make Alumbrera a challenge with regards to lighting. As with many of the villas on Mustique, the outlets and voltages in Alumbrera were all over the place: no uniformity whatsoever. I’m also very much against the idea of having any furniture against the walls, I prefer a floatier room plan where people can walk around all of the furniture; it feels less claustrophobic that way. But this presents a challenge in that you must figure out something to do with the chords to any lamps you’ve put in the room.
I called in a couple of experts to help me with this one. First was Anthony Bartolomeo, one of the founders of Integrate Electrical Solutions, a company out of New York that does amazing work with lighting. He transformed the rat’s nest of wires that used to power Alumbrera into an elegant lighting solution. Now, like magic the mere push of a button will illuminate an entire room.
For help with lamps, I brought in the incomparable lamp doctor to the stars Gabriel Delasquez. We found some beautiful lamps for Alumbrera and used twisted silk chord that blended in perfectly and look very chic. Because so many of the rooms are indoor/ outdoor, there is always the issue of lamps blowing over in the high winds so we had to weigh them down. I’ll never forget the image of the elegant Gabriel trotting down to the world-famous Macaroni beach to fill the insides of our lamps with sand to keep them from blowing away.
After much work, the lighting at Alumbrera is divine and you won’t find anyone wandering around with a flashlight!
Master of the House
What began as a project that was meant to involve making a few little adjustments to the Lundin’s beautiful villa Alumbrera quickly snowballed into redesigning all of the various parts of the house. Eight years later, I have worked on every corner of the grand villa from the bathrooms to the guest rooms to the pool to the landscaping.
This villa was my third project in Mustique and I felt I was finally hitting my stride. I had still been under Peter Marino’s excellent tutelage while I was working on Ocean Breeze and had gotten my bearings doing a project on my own at Yemanjá, but this project was just on such a massive scale. More than any client before, Eva put a great deal of faith in me to head up all of the design work for the house. I not only did my regular interior work but managed everyone involved with making improvements on the home. I simply adored the Lundins from the start; they have always been very supportive of me and my career. Being Swedish they had a particular affinity hiring and supporting the work of women: they even had a female butler who ran their house, something that is almost as rare on Mustique now as it was in 19th century England.
The Lundins traveled frequently so I was often at the villa on my own with whoever else was working there. It was then that I had to learn delegate as I couldn’t possibly micromanage the work that every tradesmen was doing on a home that size.